You hear this car long before you ever see it. A V12 with its own throttle for every cylinder doesn't idle so much as mutter about what it's about to do, and it mutters through the trees for a good while before the nose finally swings around the bend. Orange. Lamborghini calls it Arancio Atlas, and against this much green it's the loudest thing on the car, right up until it isn't.
This is a Diablo GT, number 67 of 80 built in 1999, all of them for Europe. Wide carbon bodywork over a wider track, and a wing you could rest a mug on. It never got US certification. The regular Diablo made it to America. The GT stayed a rumor here, which makes one burbling down a shaded two-lane with a plate on it a strange thing to witness.
The engine does all the talking out here. It's 6.0 liters now, grown from the SV's 5.7, breathing through the the engine lid. 575 horsepower at 7,300 rpm through a 5-speed, with nothing driving the front wheels. As intended. Lamborghini had four-wheel drive sitting on the shelf, the VT had run it for years, and for the GT they left it off on purpose. Nothing vectors, nothing intervenes. Whatever the right foot decides, the rear tires answer for.
Underneath the carbon airbox it's still the 60-degree V12 Giotto Bizzarrini drew in 1963 for Lamborghini's first car. They stretched it and turned it up for damn near half a century and never started over, not until the design finally retired in 2010. What's working its way up this road is the old engine late in life, getting everything off its chest.
At walking pace the exhaust knocks off the redwoods like it's checking each one. On the overrun it breathes. When the road opens up, the sound piles into the canopy, and the leaves keep most of it. By mid-morning the sun starts getting through in patches, dappling the road, and the light fog packs it in.
And then the car is through, hard on the throttle somewhere past the next bend, second gear hanging around in the trees after the car is long gone. The birds give it a minute. Then they take the morning back.
